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Recap / How I Met Your Mother S 8 E 15 PSI Love You

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Barney tries to find out the identity of a man Robin was obsessed with as a teenager. Marshall and Lily are concerned that Ted's new girlfriend is a stalker.


This episode provides examples of:

  • Actor Allusion: Dave Coulier makes the "cut it out" hand gesture from Full House. Future Ted notes that he always liked that joke.
  • Blatant Lies: Barney claims his scuffle with Alan Thicke ended in a draw, but the audience sees a shot where Alan holds Barney effortlessly to the ground with one hand while eating a doughnut with the other.
  • Continuity Snarl: To save a few paragraphs, let's just say that virtually nothing in this episode jives with anything from the three previous Robin Sparkles episodes ("Slap Bet", "Sandcastles in the Sand", and "Glitter").
  • Darker and Edgier: Robin's third single, PS I Love You, is an angry grunge rock song with stalker lyrics reminiscent of Alanis Morissette.
  • Fire Alarm Distraction: Ted encounters Jeanette. his last girlfriend before meeting The Mother, on the subway and believes she might be his destined love because they're both reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. He meets her again on the university campus when the fire alarm rang. But it turns out Jeanette is a stalker and she started a fire to set off the fire alarm so that she could meet him. While Ted finds this charming, his friends are creeped out by it.
  • Grand Romantic Gesture: Discussed and deconstructed. As Ted points out, whether these gestures (particularly in romantic relationships that are still very new or even non-existent) come off as cute and charming or just creepy is almost entirely dependent on how the person on the receiving end reacts. Lily faking some equipment trouble so she'd have an excuse to talk to Marshall, and knocking on several different doors before she found his? Cute and sweet... because Marshall loves her and is charmed by the fact that she wanted to talk to him so badly. Had he not liked her back, or their relationship had ended on a sour note, she would've looked like a stalker. Similarly, Marshall waiting for Lily in her dorm room and asking her out via an original song is one of her favorite memories, but if she hadn't felt the same way, he probably would've gotten himself pepper-sprayed.
  • Lethal Chef: Marshall implies that Lily has a tendency to burn pot roast.
  • Meet Cute: Mentioned by name by Ted. The others insist it's Stalker with a Crush.
  • Mugging the Monster: After Barney is lead to the conclusion that Robin's song was about Alan Thicke, the episode goes to commercial just as he attacks Thicke...only for it to cut back with Barney returning to the apartment looking banged up. Turns out Alan curb stomped him.
  • The '90s: If The '80s didn't come out until 1993 with Let's Go To The Mall, then The '90s didn't come out until 1996 with P.S. I Love You.
  • Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: The full version of "P.S. I Love You" includes a rapidly sung set of lyrics just after "Restraining orders don't scare me".
    Robin Daggers: The lawyers at the record company / made me promise to say / that the views expressed in this song do not necessarily reflect the views of Dominant Records or any of its subsidiaries.
  • Rimshot: After Ted says to Marshall "You're just jealous that Lily never burned anything for you" to which Marshall retorts "Clearly, you've never tried her pot roast", Barney, who happened to have a drum and cymbal, did this. He actually brought it for an unrelated drum roll, but felt it was good timing.
  • Running Gag: Canadians love Tim Hortons and donuts.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Robin's obsession and grunge rock phase is a shout out to Alanis Morissette's single You Oughta Know. Dave Coulier even makes a cameo saying Robin's song isn't about him (You Oughta Know was about him, as were several other break up songs. Coulier had a habit of dating young musicians).
    • Half of the Dobler-Dahmer Theory is named after Lloyd Dobler, the male lead from Say Anything....
  • Stalker with a Crush: Brought up and discussed throughout the episode, as the gang debates whether Jennette is a stalker or just a persistent romantic. Ted also correctly points out that, when taken out of context, some of the things Marshall and Lily did when they first met could seem a bit creepy. However, everything they did was harmless, while the end of the episode reveals that Jennette followed Ted around, started a fire to get him out of a building so she could meet him, and has been trying to meet him since she saw him on the cover of a magazine, months ago, making it clear that she's actually dangerously obsessed.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial:
    Ted: And before I could call out after her in any kind of embarrassing way that a bunch of teenagers made fun of for the next five stops while I stared straight ahead and pretended not to hear them - she was gone.


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